OECD study states that immigration boosted Finnish economy

An OECD study claims that immigration boosted the Finnish economy by 0.16% in 2011 including pensions. This revelation is a blow to anti-immigration pundits, who commonly claim that immigration drains social welfare resources and offers no economic benefits.

As Migrant Tales has shown over and over again the red herrings, urban tales and outright racism of anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) of Finland, it’s nothing more than a storm in a tea-cup and a way to feed their opportunistic political careers by attracting voters with the help of fear.

The study showed that the economies of countries like Luxembourg, Switzerland and Italy benefited the most from immigration while Germany, France and Poland showed the contrary.

Due to the deep global recession after 2008, migration into OECD countries rose by 2% to almost 4 million more n 2011 versus the previous year. Migration to the EU rose by 15% after declining by almost 40% during 2009-11.

While matters may appear to have improved, the job market has worsened sharply for immigrants rising by 5 percentage points to over 4 million unemployed in 2008-12 compared with a 3 point jump for natives. One out of two immigrants have been out of work for over 12 months.

Immigrant youth and low-skilled migrants from Latin America and North Africa have been the hardest hit.

“More jobs for immigrants would create big economic benefits for them and their host countries,” the OECD states. “Raising the employment level of high educated and immigrant women to the level of natives would create major fiscal gains for countries such as France, Belgium and Sweden with large long-standing immigrant populations. ”

The OCED says fighting discrimination is vital: “The report assesses the level of discrimination across countries and finds its extent much higher than previously thought. Generally, a person with an immigrant-sounding name, for example, has to send at least twice as many applications to get a job interview than one with a non-immigrant name.”

Related

Here’s a question in light of the OECD study: How much economic damage has anti-immigrant sentiment cost Finland? How many skilled workers and foreign investment (new jobs) has it turned back? The findings could be shocking.